1955: in a seedy hotel in Alexandria, Egypt a sinister ex-Foreign Legionnaire shoots dead the impoverished son of an American billionaire then turns the gun on himself. Only many years later is the story behind this fatal encounter teased out of several ambiguous and unreliable sources. Reaching back to the mid-1930s it relates the odyssey of a strangely-matched quartet of travellers across a Europe descending into darkness. Whether pursuing their own, separate agendas or being stealthily manipulated by others, they leave in their wake a trail of violence and death. And the events of this chaotic journey cast long, lethal shadows - and some light - onto an uncertain future.